1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for controlling a robot and a method thereof, and more particularly, to an apparatus enabling a robot to actively respond with actions to solve a variety of unstable states that can occur in situations and circumstances occurring to the robot, and a method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
Active control technology is the conventional technology that deals with the art of the present invention. Active control technology is based on desires and emotions, and active control technology is employed by robots of the pet robot group represented by AIBO of the Japanese company, SONY.
In AIBO, a method of drawing an action with internal and external stimuli, such as hunger and scolding, as motives, is embedded. According to this method, AIBO receives inputs from a plurality of perception evaluation items and motive states, and by repeatedly applying a variety of arithmetic expressions and matrix operations that can calculate correlations between each element forming the inputs, AIBO actively draws a behavioral expression. An example of such a drawn behavioral expression is a behavioral expression from an instinctive desire as illustrated by expression 1:
                              ⌊                                                    Exploration                                                                    Teasing                                                                    Resting                                              ⌋                =                              ⌊                                                                                -                    10                                                                    10                                                  0                                                                              0                                                  0                                                  15                                                                              10                                                                      -                    5                                                                    0                                                      ⌋                    ⁢                                    ⌊                                                                    Fatigue                                                                                        Curiosity                                                                                        Affection                                                              ⌋                        .                                              (        1        )            
According to expression 1, if fatigue is high and curiosity is low, a resting behavior is active. Fatigue, curiosity and the like are based on a desire and emotion model of the robot and are continuously calculated by gathering external stimuli values sensed from a variety of sensors arranged on the robot, and which are input to the action selection arithmetic expressions. In this manner, the robot actively expresses a series of actions.
However, the active action expression method based on desire and emotion, as described above, may be useful in order to draw an instinctive action, but it is difficult for the method to be used in order to draw actions that have a high-level of intention. In this case, the actions that have a high-level of intention include the following actions.
First, the actions include an action involving a user. That is, a robot should be able to draw an action, i.e., a service that can improve comfort, and provide pleasure and enjoyment to the user. For example, when the interpreted result of a current situation indicates that the user is in a living room, wherein the temperature is high and the humidity is low and causing the user to feel uncomfortable, the robot should generate an objective to make the living room surroundings pleasant for the user and should be able to provide a suitable service based on that objective.
Secondly, the robot should be able to determine whether or not an unstable situation has occurred by continuously monitoring and interpreting changes in the surrounding, and draw a objective-oriented action that can solve the occurred unstable situation. For example, if the robot senses a situation where the temperature of a certain area is continuously rising at midnight, the robot should determine that an emergency situation has occurred, and in order to solve the problem, the robot should be able to alert the user or further examine the area where the emergency situation has occurred.